


The Whole Truth

by alpacasandravens



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Episode: s06e06 You Can't Handle The Truth, Love Confessions, M/M, a bit - Freeform, as in they're not together but it's discussed, the dean/cas is pre-slash, this is sad. there is no happy ending.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-14 18:14:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29795880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacasandravens/pseuds/alpacasandravens
Summary: "You gonna fly on back to Heaven?” Dean asks. He can’t quite keep the resentment out of his voice - he spent all week praying, asking Cas to come help him, tell him what’s wrong with Sam. And the only thing he’ll show up for is a three-second conversation about some Biblical artifact.“I’m needed there,” Cas says. “Heaven is at war.”He doesn’t fly away.And maybe Dean just wants to pick a fight, or maybe he wants to make himself feel worse, because he asks Cas “And that’s why you couldn’t answer any of my calls? Or tell me what’s wrong with Sam?”Or: Cas visits Dean the scene after Dean gets hit with the truth curse, not the scene before.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Lisa Braeden/Dean Winchester
Kudos: 27





	The Whole Truth

**Author's Note:**

> please enjoy this completely unedited stream of words that came to me after watching 6x06 for the first time in 6 or so years. i simply am a sucker for truth spell fics and this episode... things are not going well for dean let's just say that!  
> warning for brief very vague mention to john winchester's abuse in the third paragraph.

It’s been a long day. Week. Life. Whatever. 

Dean’s in a bar, because he feels like he’s always in a bar. That or he’s breaking into the trusty battle of Jack Daniels he keeps in his duffel. Because how else is he supposed to cope?

Just last week, Sam let him get turned into a vampire. And yeah, he got cured, but that didn’t make up for all the shit he went through as a vamp. First there was the bloodlust. Which was fucking horrible, thank you very much. It would’ve been better if he’d known there was a cure, but he didn’t, which meant he’d just been walking around starving, barely resisting draining everyone he saw and thinking that was gonna be the rest of his damn life. He’s lucky Sam told him about that cure before he thought of some creative way to behead himself. 

And if that wasn’t bad enough, he’d shoved Ben while he was turned. It was nothing like what his dad used to do to him, but he’d laid a hand on that kid and he’d sworn never to do that. Lisa had kicked him out, and he wouldn’t blame her if she never spoke to him again. Which seems like that’s what’s gonna happen - he’s left her four voicemails, and she hasn’t returned a single call. So on top of literally being a vampire (and not the sexy kind, either), he’d lost his only chance at a stable life and a family. 

That was pretty much overlooking the way Sam had let him get turned, which Dean couldn’t forget. There’s a certain level of trust you need from a hunting partner, and there’s a level of trust you expect from someone you’ve lived with and raised your entire life, and apparently Sam just couldn’t give a fuck if he was even human. And Dean doesn’t even have any idea what’s wrong with Sam, because his brother keeps acting like everything’s peachy and Cas refuses to answer his prayers or his phone. So yeah, he’s drinking. 

“You want another?” the bartender asks. She doesn’t ask why Dean’s drinking the hard stuff at one in the afternoon, and he’s grateful. 

“Nah,” he says, “I’m working.” 

On the bar’s single television screen, a daytime news anchor drones on in an irritatingly peppy voice about the opening of a new cat cafe. 

His phone rings in his pocket. It’s Sam, and when he’s done with that painful conversation - even a simple two-sentence exchange hurts now, when his brother is either Lucifer or a shifter or something worse - he turns back to her. 

“Actually, I’ll take that drink.”

The corner of her mouth turns up in a half smile. “You not working anymore?”

Dean puts his head in his hands. “Working up to it.” 

Four minutes and one shot later, Dean doesn’t see anything weird about muttering “Just the truth” when she asks if he wants anything else. 

Clearly there’s something up though, because immediately the bartender looks him in the eyes and tells him why she thinks she can’t get pregnant, and that was way more information than Dean needed on someone he doesn’t know and will never see again. 

“Uh. Okay,” he says. He pulls a twenty out of his wallet and drops it on the bar. “I gotta go.” 

On his way out the door, the bar’s only other occupant, a woman in a bright pink dress, stops him to tell him about her boob job. “I just got these done,” she says. 

Normally, Dean would be totally down to have sex with a random but admittedly very attractive woman to forget his problems, but today, that’s just not in the cards. He might not be in a relationship anymore (though he isn’t sure - if Lisa would call him, maybe they could talk it out. He could tell her about how it wasn’t like it looked, and maybe she’d listen, take him back.) but it’s way too soon to jump from the settled-down life into the bar hookup scene. Besides, he’s on a case. 

So he leaves, and he heads over to the Impala. Research to be done, crime scenes to break into. A typical day on the job.

Dean doesn’t go to the crime scene right away. It’s the middle of the day, after all. It’ll be way easier to break in at night. Instead, he goes back to the motel, where Sam expected him to be anyway. 

An hour later, he thinks he’s onto something. One of the witnesses had complained about a missing horn, and the picture of it looks pretty similar to the one Dean’s looking at now - held in a very-inaccurate Gabriel’s hand. The drawing itself might not have a clue what Gabriel looks like, but the info seems accurate. Horn of truth, super old, makes everyone fess up their darkest secrets. 

He’s gonna call Sam, he really is, but he just can’t trust him anymore, so Dean sits on the edge of the motel bed and closes his eyes. 

“Cas?” he says. “Might have a Biblical nuke down here. Horn of Gabriel, seems like your division. So if you could just come down here…” 

He trails off into nothing. He doesn’t even know why he bothers anymore - he’s been praying to Cas for months, asking him where the hell he’s been, and even more so this last week. But nothing. 

He’s almost given up, has his phone out ready to call Sam, when there is a soft flap of wings, and Cas is standing on the opposite side of the motel room. He looks horrible - stress is written on his face, and every line of his body is tense. 

“You said Horn of Gabriel?” Cas asks. His voice is scratchier than usual. His eyes don’t leave Dean, but Dean gets the feeling Cas would rather be anywhere but there. 

“That’s what it looks like,” Dean says. “People are taking brutal honesty to new levels.”

Cas narrows his eyes. “It’s not the Horn of Gabriel.” 

“How the fuck do you know that.” 

“The horn’s not here, for one.” Cas keeps looking at Dean, and Dean’s starting to feel a little like he’s under the microscope. “And you’re cursed.” 

“I am not cursed,” Dean lies. See? He can lie, so he’s fine. But it’s only a lie if he’s cursed, so it’s kind of a catch-22. 

“You are,” Cas insists. “I can see it on you. It looks like the work of a minor goddess.” 

They stand in silence for a moment. 

“So now you know the Horn was a false alarm, you gonna fly on back to Heaven?” Dean asks. He can’t quite keep the resentment out of his voice - he spent all week praying, asking Cas to come help him, tell him what’s wrong with Sam. And the only thing he’ll show up for is a three-second conversation about some Biblical artifact. 

“I’m needed there,” Cas says. “Heaven is at war.” 

He doesn’t fly away. 

And maybe Dean just wants to pick a fight, or maybe he wants to make himself feel worse, because he asks Cas “And that’s why you couldn’t answer any of my calls? Or tell me what’s wrong with Sam?”

“It is one reason, yes.” 

He should stop. He knows he should stop. 

“What’s the other? You just don’t give a fuck anymore?”

Cas clenches his jaw, and he looks dangerous. Something has sparked behind his eyes and Dean is suddenly aware of just how many angels Cas has killed, how he’d almost burst Dean’s eardrums when he wasn’t even trying to be malevolent, just trying to say hello. 

“You have no idea how much I care,” Cas hisses, taking step after slow step toward Dean. “But there are some things that take priority over being your personal supernatural encyclopedia.” And now he’s close enough that he’s in Dean’s space, somehow towering over him even though normally he’s a couple inches shorter, “and the fate of the world is one of those things.” 

This is when Dean should apologize. He knows that. He should say he’s sorry and leave Cas to fight his civil war in Heaven. But he’s never been one to back down from a fight, especially not when he’s hurting as badly as he is now. 

“You care, huh? That’s what you call up and leaving after Sam died? That’s what you call letting me get turned into a fucking vampire and leaving me with whatever monster’s wearing Sam’s skin?”

In the past, when things have gotten to this point between them, Cas has beaten the shit out of him. Most recently, when he almost said yes to Michael. But instead, he deflates. 

“I don’t know what’s wrong with Sam. When I pulled him out of the cage, I must have done so imperfectly. But that is your brother.”

Dean thought Cas might be done, but he only takes a step back before continuing. 

“Everything I am doing, I’m doing it for you. I’m trying to show the other angels free will because you taught it to me. I’m making sure they don’t hunt you down for preventing their apocalypse because I care about you. And I’m not going to apologize that it takes me away from you, because I don’t regret it.” 

Suddenly, all the fight leaves Dean. He drops back onto the edge of the motel bed and looks at his knees. So he’s not looking at Cas when he says, “I love you, Dean. But I cannot be at your beck and call. I have a war to fight.” 

Before Dean can process that, there is the soft flap of wings, and Dean knows Cas is gone. 

Dean spends a lot of time sitting in that same spot on the edge of the bed. After a while, his back hurts from hunching over so he flops backwards, spreading out and staring at the ceiling instead of his worn-through jeans. 

He hadn’t been sure, when he called Cas, whether truth spells, or curses, whatever, worked on angels. But apparently they do, because Cas never would have said any of that otherwise. Apparently he’d lied to Dean before about raising Sam, though he doesn’t have a clue why. If Cas raised Sam, why not tell him? Why did he have to be all secretive about it? 

And that wasn’t even getting started on Cas’s assertions about Dean. Those, he can’t think about for too long, because he thinks he might go crazy. There was no way he taught someone free will. He, a guy who spent twenty-two years of his life saying yes-sir-no-sir to his father, shooting when his dad said to shoot and taking the cases his dad wanted him to take, is the prime example of someone with absolutely no free will. And yet Cas, a celestial being, learned free will from him. It’s enough to scramble his brain like an egg. 

That same celestial being also loves him. Like a brother, presumably. Hell, it’s not even weird that Cas had to be under a truth spell to say it - Dean sure doesn’t tell Sam he loves him, even though he does. Although this weird, raised-from-the-Cage wrong Sam doesn’t count. Dean sure doesn’t love him, not after that vampire stunt. 

(Still, there’s something nagging at the back of his brain that says it’s not brotherly, that he saw Cas maybe twice for the year and some he was with Lisa, but a week after she probably breaks up with him, Cas flies right back over. There’s something about how you don’t start a civil war with your siblings over some random guy unless you’ve got weirdly strong feelings for him. But Dean’s not thinking about that, because if he does he’ll pray until Cas comes back and gives him a straight answer, which he very definitely does not want.)

It’s not until Sam calls him for a third time that Dean drags himself out of the hotel room and into the Impala, headed for the crime scene. Hunting’s always the perfect distraction from his brain, but right now, drinking himself stupid would be a better one. 

He’s not even surprised when Lisa calls him as he’s pulling up. 

All Dean’s excuses fly out the window, and all he can say as Lisa tells him to stay away from her son, that she can’t have him around anymore, is “I’m sorry.” 

Things don’t even feel different after. Maybe she’d already broken up with him, maybe this was just the pity call to make sure he knew and would stop leaving messages, because everything felt like it was already over. Maybe it had been over for a while. 

Maybe it had never been real, always something Dean was just holding onto in a desperate attempt to be normal, to be part of a family and have a kid, even if the kid wasn’t actually his. 

Shit.

He sits in the car for a while, tipping his head back and staring at the ceiling until he’s able to push everything down enough to go into the building. 

One of these days, something has to go right for him. Right? His life can’t just be things falling apart around him, can it?

But then Dean bares his soul to Veritas, tells her about Lisa and Cas and how he just wants a family but knows he’ll never have one, about how he’s nothing but a killer and he knows that now, how he can’t even look Sam in the eyes anymore, the words pulled out of the dark parts of him. And Sam looks her in the eyes and lies. 

Somehow that’s even worse. Because even when he had no one, he had Sammy. But now, whatever Sam is, it’s inhuman enough that he can lie to the goddess of truth, and that means he doesn’t have anyone. 

**Author's Note:**

> if you enjoyed this, tell me in a comment! I'm on tumblr @alpacasandravens, and I'm working on other, longer+less spur of the moment supernatural fics at present.


End file.
